Despite the big media splash leading up to its announcement, the Segway scooter (aka “Ginger”, aka “IT”) hasn’t come anywhere close to meeting anticipated sales objectives.

It’s another case of falling in love with a technology, and ignoring the real business issues. Too bad NASA can’t take a lesson from it.

Despite the big media splash leading up to its announcement, the Segway scooter (aka “Ginger”, aka “IT”) hasn’t come anywhere close to meeting anticipated sales objectives.

It’s another case of falling in love with a technology, and ignoring the real business issues. Too bad NASA can’t take a lesson from it.

Despite the big media splash leading up to its announcement, the Segway scooter (aka “Ginger”, aka “IT”) hasn’t come anywhere close to meeting anticipated sales objectives.

It’s another case of falling in love with a technology, and ignoring the real business issues. Too bad NASA can’t take a lesson from it.

Lovgate.C is on the way.

Read the article and quit using Microsoft mail clients.

A car was severely damaged by a rare Norwegian flying moose.

If it were a Frostbite Falls moose, I might have thought that it was shot out of Rocky’s arms by Boris and Natasha.

No word from the driver as to whether or not it once bit his sister…

The TSA is still dragging its feet in allowing pilots to be armed, despite the Congressional mandate, which they continue to interpret, apparently, as an option.

Price said the response to the mechanics of how the weapons will be handled, transported and stored has been mixed.

“We are pleased that we will have immediate access to the weapon on the flight deck,” he said. “But in terms of [transportation], it’s a huge problem.”

Storing the weapon inside a locked box, rather than on their person – where law enforcement officers and armed private citizens transport their handguns – poses a number of problems for pilots, Price believes.

“That just makes us a huge target. It just paints a bulls-eye on every pilot, whether he happens to be an armed pilot or not,” he argued.

“Now, all of the sudden, my pilot’s uniform gives the criminal element – that may be in the employee parking lot at three in the morning when I show up for work – some idea that I may be carrying a very high-value weapon,” Price explained, “and they know that that weapon is unavailable to me to use in self-defense.”

Gee, is it possible that they’re trying to discourage pilots from carrying guns? Couldn’t be…

One of the many reasons to dislike this Administration. Not, of course, that any Democrat would be any better.

Bill Whittle has issued forth another gem, perhaps his best essay so far.

We hear of polls saying that upwards of 75% of countries like England and France see the United States as the greatest danger to the world, and it knocks the wind out of us. No, that?s can?t be right. Can it? Can they really believe that?

Some do. Many do.

Some of this emotion is genuine, real fear and panic brought on by our unparalleled success, and our past miscalculations and blunders. Some of it is envy, pure and simple. Some is driven by pain, the pain of lost greatness and glory. Some is projection, a sense of how tempting it might be to hold such power, from countries with histories of real empires, real governors, and real subjugation.

And some of it ? much of it ? is intentionally aimed at our decency, our sense of restraint and isolation, our desire to get back to our own happy and safe lives and turn our back on the world lost in the delusion that we long to possess it.

Go read it, and encourage him to write the book.

One of the benefits of spending a great amount of time in Los Angeles is the opportunity to attend lectures like the one I did today at Cal Tech.

I went up to hear Dan Dennett give a talk focused on his most recent book, “Freedom Evolves.” Sadly, I’ve neither read, nor even purchased the book, else I could have gotten his signature. Having heard the lecture, however, I’m now determined to do both.

The lecture was at the smaller auditorium in Baxter Hall, above the Ramo auditorium. It was packed, standing (and sitting in the aisles) room only. I arrived late due to unanticipated traffic situations, so I stood in the back. That turned out to be OK, because the presentation on his laptop apparently hadn’t been coordinated with the video computer projector–several minutes were wasted in reconfiguring his machine in video resolution matching that of the projector, while the moderator (the event was sponsored by the Southern California Skeptics Society) read from an updated list of oxymorons to keep the audience entertained temporarily.

I was struck (as I always am at such occasions of meeting of scientists and engineers) by the incongruity of presumably high-tech people being flummoxed by the technological vagaries of modern computer equipment (in this case, of course, being Microsoft, so probably beyond the wiles of the brilliant Caltechies in the audience). It’s always interesting to be in a room full of people in which the average IQ is probably about 130. As representative examples, both Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker were in attendance. Fortunately, it wasn’t totally inscrutable–after about ten minutes or so, the appropriate menus were dragged down–Program/Settings/Control Panel/Monitor–and the appropriate resolution selected, and all was well.

And so the lecture finally started.

I should preface this by saying that I’ve read three other works by Dennett: Consciousness Explained, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and The Mind’s I (co-edited with Douglas Hofstadter). I admire his work, and consider him one of the most interesting thinkers on the planet on these subjects. That said, while I found the lecture entertaining and interesting, it was ultimately disappointing and unsatisfying. That said, it was, after all, a one-hour lecture, and it would be unfair for me to pass judgement on his theses without actually reading the book, and I hope to do so in the near future, time and dollars permitting.

The fundamental thesis that I took away was that he wanted to blow up the equivalence in peoples’ minds between determinism and lack of free will. Here are the most memorable bits (you can be assured that they were memorable because I took no notes, and I have a lousy memory, so anything that’s preserved, hours after the fact, and still available for blogging, is by definition, memorable…).

It is possible to have free will in a deterministic universe. (I suspect that if pressed to the wall, he would admit that this isn’t true in an ultimate, philosophical sense, but his thesis is about practical senses, as in how should society treat criminals). In an ultimate, philosophical sense, in fact, free will, like consciousness, may very well be an illusion. Of course, that statement always begs the question–who is being fooled?

The important point that he really wanted to make is that a deterministic universe is not only not antipathetic to free will, but actually makes it more useful, in an evolutionary sense.

As an example, he noted the case of walking across a field in a thunderstorm. In an undeterministic universe, a harm-avoiding agent would be at a loss as to what to do, because events would be utterly random. But suppose that lightning strikes could be predicted. In that event, knowledge would be available as to whether or not the trek across the field, at that time, would be safe. Therefore, a deterministic universe, with associated knowledge, could enhance the value of choice, so determinism actually increases freedom.

He has coined a new, and useful, word–evitability. You can figure out the meaning–just think of the opposite of ept, or ane, or gruntled, which are not true English words, but have counterwords.

He believes that contrary to determinism making all of life’s actions (including human life’s actions) inevitable, evolution, in its growth of complexity, has allowed us to make the unpleasant consequences of life evitable–that is, avoidable, to a degree, and because avoiders have an evolutionary advantage, they have even more of an advantage in a deterministic universe in which outcomes from bad decisions can be actually predicted, given sufficient knowledge and experience.

In his view, free will, and consciousness, like intelligence, are emergent properties of a congregation of entities that do not possess those properties. One of his quotes, in the context of the question about whether or not robots have souls: “Yes, there is a soul–but it consists of tiny robots!”

However, based on the book’s title, I think that the important, take-home correlary thesis, is that freedom, which is derived from free will, has evolved as well. It, like consciousness, and life itself, is an emergent property, that is derived from a quality provided by a sufficiently-large quantity. Freedom is more than the sum of non-free parts, just as smart entities can be created by congregating large numbers of non-smart things.

There are conditions that allow life, and there are conditions that permit freedom, not only in action, but in thought, and those conditions must be preserved for freedom of thought, will and action to be preserved. Just as, under certain conditions, life could go extinct, there are certain conditions that might allow life to go on, but for freedom to go extinct.

I found this a particularly topical subject, because in much of the world, the conditions that permit freedom continue to evolve, and we are perhaps on the verge of enhancing the conditions for it in one particular country, as we hope to liberate it from a sociopath who believes that the world exists for the fulfillment of his own desires and pleasure.

While I agree with Dennett’s basic idea, it remains a dangerous one to many people, as he admitted himself in the lecture. He believes that the notion that it is dangerous is a mistaken one, but that won’t prevent them from shouting him down, because they will sincerely continue to believe that a deterministic universe implies a lack of morality.

Here is the serious problem with it, not in terms of its validity, but in terms of societal acceptance of it.

There are a large number of people who are able to accept both the scientific theory of evolution, and the existence of a Biblical God. I’m not talking about the fundamentalist Christians who object to the teaching of evolution to their children, but the mainstream Christians (particularly Catholics, such as the Jesuits) who have the mental agility to balance these two concepts in their minds, and are not accordingly currently mounting petition drives against the teaching of evolution in the schools.

They reconcile the two seemingly-incompatible beliefs by calling the Book of Genesis a metaphor, and by believing that while man evolved from lower animals, something happened a few thousand years ago that made him unique. God gave him what the AI types call “the juice.” Or a soul.

Dennett is kicking the ladder out from under this philosophical balancing act by saying that while humans are special, and they do have a “soul” in some sense, that they are only somewhat more special than their non-human ancestors, who also possessed the same property–just to a lesser degree.

That doesn’t grate in any way on those of us who are provisional transcendental materialistic reductionists, but for those who believe that man is unique among all animals, it is not just unsettling–it is indeed heresy and unreconciliable with the foundation of their beliefs, because it doesn’t draw a bright line between man and ape. Or aardvark. If it’s a gradient, rather than a binary condition, he’s opened up a whole new front in the culture wars, drawing in vast new brigades of believers in the concept of man in God’s image.

He spent a good deal of his talk in describing how he understands his opponents’ concerns, and that they arise only from a mistaken understanding of the implications of current evolutionary theory.

I wish that he were right.

OK, I attended the LA blog panel last night, and also didn’t go to Heather’s and get smashed. My excuse for not writing anything about it sooner is the same excuse that I had to not get blotto at Chateau Havrilesky–I’m nursing a recuperating Patricia, who’s recovering from some minor surgery. I felt a little guilty about going at all, but in her loving way (of which I am always undeserving) she insisted, so we rented her some movies (it’s amazing how much more quickly movies can be selected when they’re being selected for just one person…), I made dinner for her, and took off for the event. I left later than I wanted, and LA traffic was typical Saturday night–there was no way to get there quickly, so I missed the first twenty minutes or so.

Luke Ford, who was on the panel (sorry, no permalink), has a good rundown of the highlights. It was a rollicking good discussion, and seemed more focused on the dynamics and politics of blogging, rather than last week’s event in Chinatown, which seemed to be more about technology. I didn’t attend that one, partly because it looked a little too hip to me, and anyone who knows me knows that I’m the lord of unhip.

That is to say, I’m not down with it. I’m not even with it.

I don’t even care what “it” is. I’m just not a hep cat.

From what I heard, my impression was correct, and I’ve no regrets in not attending, since it would have meant leaving Patricia alone two Saturday nights in a row. I was quite pleased to attend this one, though. Cathy Seipp did a great job moderating, and because the audience was small, and smart, it wasn’t just a panel discussion–it was a seminar, with a lot of good, civilized give and take from the floor.

What I’d like to focus on are a couple of issues that came up in the discussion.

The first is that there seemed to me an inordinate amount of discussion about the political leanings of the blogosphere, or at least that portion that seems to get the most attention, some of which was on the panel. It was another display of the sterility and uselessness of political labels like “right-wing” and “conservative” and “liberal.” Of the people on the panel, I doubt if any of them would self identify as either “right-wing” or “conservative.” (Though it was pointed out that we did have one religious conservative on the panel–Luke Ford, who’s an unorthodox orthodox Jew, complete with yarmulke, who also writes a lot about sex and porn…) Like Glenn, I’m always surprised to be called either of those things.

My political views are always evolving somewhat, but if I have to be labeled, I consider myself a child of the Enlightenment (not the French-style one, with the guillotines and all), but a classical nineteenth-century liberal. But I don’t think that there’s any one label that can encompass any person who thinks broadly and cogently about issues, and to attempt to apply one is self defeating and pointless.

But many people, including many journalists, have trouble describing someone that they can’t put into a box, so they come up with various litmus tests that allow them to categorize folks. Example: pro removing Saddam, with or without yet another UNSC resolution=”right wing.” Another example: no problem with human cloning=”left-wing or liberal.” Yet another example: Not understanding that the president is a retarded monkey (disregarding the facts that he graduated from Harvard with an MBA, and seems to outwit apparently much smarter non-simians at every political turn)=”right wing extremist.”

Of course, one then has to be careful not to use too many different kinds of test strips, or one gets conflicting results.

I suspect that this is what happens when many people read weblogs. They read it until they see something that produces a bright color change in the pH paper, and at that point they consider the test completed, and blogger categorized. If you consider yourself a liberal Democrat, right now one of your strongest litmus tests might be the war, or even more specifically, an insufficient amount of antipathy to the war, and specifically to this “unelected Administration.” So it’s not surprising that many place “warbloggers” (with whom, on many other issues they might find themselves in agreement) in the camp of the “right.” But I think that this is more of a perception, focused through imperfect prisms of thought, than any reality.

This morning, Dennis “the Menace” Kucinich was on Meet the Press. Russert challenged him to back up his statement that “it’s about oooiiiiilllll!!”

He trotted out the usual (circumstantial only) argument, such as it is: Iraq has oil; the Bush people are oil men; they’ve offered no other reason: therefore it must be oil.

Never mind that Venezuela has oil, Saudi Arabia has oil, Iraq’s oil could be gained without sending hundreds of thousands of troops to the region and risking the lives of military men and women by simply doing a deal with Saddam.

Never mind the fact that the President has been making a case, and that perhaps Congressman Kucinich is simply too dim to comprehend it, or he doesn’t believe it, but to say that the President’s offered no other reasons is simply untrue.

The argument is simply hogwash. Is to say that to be a right winger?

I don’t think that blogging, or success in blogging, is about ideology. It’s about clear thinking, and argumentation based on facts as best they can be ascertained. I don’t know, perhaps, right now, that looks “right wing,” for whatever reason. I still have to go with a much simpler, yet more accurate formulation; in Charles Johnson‘s words, it’s simply anti-idiotarian.

The other issue that came up was as a result of a question by Susannah Breslin to Luke Ford–to wit, since she thought that one of the best things about Luke’s blog was his errrmmm…wide range of content, not all of it family rated: was he concerned about censorship in general, and did he feel that he had to self censor?

Fortunately, Eugene Volokh fielded this admirably, because I found the question almost meaningless as stated. Censorship, like “hate,” and “racism,” has become a dramatically overused word, to the point that it’s losing almost any useful meaning. When a woman who wants to be paid by the taxpayer to smear chocolate on her body loses her NEA grant, she cries censorship, and many agree with her, when of course it’s nothing of the kind.

“Self censorship” is either an oxymoron, or a tautology, or perhaps paradoxically, both. Every writer engages in “self censorship.” Every word I write–even every word that is going into this post, even how to spell it, if you’re an avant-gard poet, is a choice. But the word for it is not really “self censorship.” It’s called editing, and judgement.

I suspect that what Susannah meant was, “do you ever not write something you’d otherwise like to because you fear some kind of repercussions from it?”

And of course, the answer is, of course. All the time.

I also don’t go out to the grocery in my bathrobe, though it might be much more convenient, out of similar fears.

But again, that’s simply judgement. Every action may carry consequences. I might write something that makes people angry, and not want to read my weblog any more. Or perhaps it will reduce their faith in my knowledge, so that they’ll be less likely to take, for example, my space policy advice. I have to judge (and censor, if you insist on using that inappropriate word) whether the words that I’m using, and ideas I’m expressing, are best accomplishing my objectives for that particular post, and for my weblog in general.

Similarly, when I write a column for Fox News, or Tech Central Station, I’m more careful in my word choice and tone than I am on the weblog, because I know that’s what those publications expect, and if I submit (at least consistently) material that they feel inappropriate, or of no interest to their readers, I won’t be writing for them any more. And once in a while (and fortunately, not very often, so I guess I have good judgement), I guess wrong, and submit something that they do decide to change. But that’s not censorship–again, it’s called “editing,” and that’s their job, and I never resent it or consider them censors.

Censorship has a very precise meaning–the prevention, by a government, of a point of view or piece of information being published. Beyond that, everyone has full freedom to publish whatever they want on their blog, and to submit anything they want to other publications. The flip side of that freedom is the necessity to accept the consequences, whether they be loss of readership, rejection of material, or even, in extreme cases, libel suits.

Are these legitimate concerns? Of course. Are they concerns about censorship? Absolutely not. Let us maintain the integrity of the meanings of words; when we lose them, we lose the ability to discuss things intelligently and rationally.

[Update at 8:30 PM PST]

Steven Den Beste has some further thoughts (though probably independently of mine) on the absurdity of boxes for bloggers.

Iowahawk has the story of another rogue regime that hasn’t been getting as much press.